Other Moments In a Soccer Player’s Life

It’s the off-season. Sergio stands before Sheri, his gorgeous cocoa-skinned girlfriend of nearly one week. They’re in his South Beach mansion’s movie room. She claims that she loves him … but she really wants to choose the movie tonight.

“Please, Sergio? I love-love- love Brad Pitt and George Clooney,” she says.

Sergio falls to the fine carpet, screaming, holding his hands over his heart as if he had been kicked there. The pain is too much for him to bear! He might not be able to take it one second longer!

Sheri relents.

“Fine. You pick what we watch,” she sighs.

The pain suddenly erased from his heart, Sergio stands and kisses Sheri on the cheek.

- - -

Sergio is running through someone else’s mansion at top speed! Mouth open wide, screaming at the top of his lungs! His arms held out like airplane wings, his long tawny hair flying in his wake!

He gets to the living room, where Sheri and hosts Susan and Bob sit at a glass coffee table over a game of Monopoly. Sergio dives onto the polished wood floors and slides to a stop next to the table. He rolls onto his back and screams happily at the gilded ceiling. He sits down next to Sheri.

“Right,” Susan says. “That’s settled, then. Sergio gets to be the car. What do you want to be, Sheri?”

- - -

Sergio and Sheri’s bodies entwine on their super-king bed with its white satin sheets and overhead mirrors. They’ve been having sex for three seconds when Sergio succumbs to what appears to be a mind-blowing orgasm. He moans loudly, waves of pleasure and relief apparently sweeping through him. There has never been an orgasm like this!

When he’s finished, Sheri says, “Sergio, you know, it’s pretty easy to tell when you’re faking an orgasm, and it has nothing to do with your performance.”

Sergio remains in character. He kisses her, rolls over. For the next eight hours, he feigns deep and satisfying sleep.

- - -

Sergio and Sheri are at the seal exhibit at SeaWorld. Like the other tourists around them, they have bought a small carton of fish. They are leaning over the railing to the exhibit, tossing the fish to the appreciative, barking seals, which stand on rocks and along the exhibit’s ledge.

When they get to the last fish, Sheri lets Sergio take it. He tosses it to his favorite seal, the playful one, but the seal is busy catching a fish from a nearby little girl. Sergio’s fish bounces off the seal’s face and falls down a grate between the exhibit and the railing. Gone forever.

Sergio drops to his knees and puts his hands on his head, interlocking his fingers, staring silently into the distance. He holds this pose for at least a minute. It’s impossible to tell if he thinks the blunder was his fault, or the seal’s.

- - -

Sergio, wearing only soccer shorts, throws a temper tantrum in his mansion’s foyer. Sheri, fully dressed and made up, watches Sergio patiently as he pretends to scream angrily, as he kicks and punches the air—all the while acting as if he were being held back by other, invisible players.

The reason for the argument lies on the marble floor of the foyer: a red card from Sheri.

When Sergio finally calms down, his face flushed and sweaty, Sheri says, gently, “All good things must come to an end, Sergio.”

Sergio tries a new pose: I Am Completely Innocent. What Did I Do? He actually mouths the words “What did I do? What did I do?”

But it’s too late. Sheri leaves the house and climbs into her sports car, which is parked in the circular drive. She turns the ignition and sees Sergio suddenly standing in front of her car, breathing hard.

Sergio decides to pretend that Sheri has run him down with her car: He throws himself onto the hood, rolls up the windshield, over the roof. He falls with an awkward thud onto the cement behind the car.

Sheri waits a moment; then she drives off.

- - -

The pizza man rings the doorbell at Sergio’s mansion. The door swings open and Sergio, seeing that the pizza has arrived, screams victoriously. He runs at the pizza man, who smartly drops the pizza box.

Sergio jumps into the pizza man’s arms! They fall to the ground! Sergio wrestles the pizza man into a hug and they roll across the grass together! There has never been a pizza delivery like this!

Sergio and the pizza man rise, arms around each other’s shoulders, slightly winded. They wave at the neighbors who are watching from their mansion windows. They take off their shirts and trade them.

The pizza man stoops to pick up the pizza box. Sergio jogs back inside to fetch napkins, paper plates, and champagne.